Effect of Substituting Hf for Zr on Fe-Co-M-Nb-B (M = Zr, Hf) Amorphous Alloys with High Saturation Magnetization

Abstract

The soft magnetic amorphous ribbons of (FexCo1−x)85M9Nb1B5 (M = Zr or Hf, x = 0.4, 0.5, 0.6, 0.7, 0.8, and 0.9) were investigated in this study. Replacing Zr by Hf turned out to increase saturation magnetization and, at the same time, reduce the coercivity, both of which serve together in enhancing the soft magnetic performance of the alloys. Moreover, the optimum ratio of Fe/Co was determined after the survey on different alloys with varying Fe/Co ratio resulting in the maximum saturation magnetization while keeping the coercivity low. After optimization, the highest saturation magnetization of 1.62 T was achieved with coercity of 11 A/m. While substitution of Hf for Zr slightly reduced the crystallization onset temperature of the amorphous structure, the thermal stability of the soft magnetic amorphous alloys was not significantly affected by the Zr/Hf replacement.